World Briefs January 2, 2010

Church bomb kills at least 21

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - Christians clashed with Egyptian police in the northern city of Alexandria on Saturday, furious over an apparent suicide bombing against worshippers leaving a New Year's Mass at a church that killed at least 21 people. It was the worst violence against the country's Christian minority in a decade.

The Interior Ministry blamed "foreign elements," and the Alexandria governor accused al-Qaida, pointing to the terror network's branch in Iraq, which has carried out a string of attacks on Christians there and has threatened Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Christian community as well.

Russian jet explodes; 3 dead

MOSCOW - A Russian passenger jet carrying 124 people caught fire as it taxied down a snowy runway in Siberia and then exploded Saturday, killing three people and injuring 43, including six who were badly burned, officials said.

Most of the passengers and crew were evacuated before the explosion, which began in one of the engines as the Tu-154 aircraft taxied for takeoff.

Rousseff sworn in as new president

BRASILIA, Brazil - From torture in a dictatorship-era jail cell to the helm of Latin America's largest nation, it's been an unlikely political rise for President Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist rebel turned career technocrat who claimed Brazil's seat of power Saturday.

In becoming the country's 36th president, Rousseff pulled off a feat nearly unthinkable a year ago when the relative unknown was tapped by then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to be the ruling Workers Party candidate.

She swept into office on the back of Silva's near universal adoration in Brazil.

- The Associated Press